This application relates to automatic inspection of rail track, for the detection of and generating alerts for certain hazards on rail tracks.
In railway systems, certain defective conditions on rail tracks are hazardous to operations of trains and may cause various safety concerns and even derailment. A hazardous condition can occur at any location in the railway systems. Hence, rail tracks must be inspected to detect the hazardous condition and, depending on the nature and magnitude of the detected hazardous condition, an appropriate corrective measure, if needed, is taken to rectify the detected hazardous condition.
Some defective conditions of rail tracks may be detected via visual inspections by rail track technicians or engineers who patrol along the rail tracks. Visual patrol inspections are labor intensive, time consuming, and highly dependent on the skills and sometimes physical conditions of individual inspectors, and the lighting and weather conditions.
Specially designed inspection vehicles such as track recording vehicles may be equipped with various sensors including cameras and video recorders to inspect rail tracks. The electronic imaging and other devices (e.g., ultrasonic sensors) used in track recording vehicles can capture images and various data of the rail tracks for further analysis of any defects or hazards by a rail track engineer or inspector. The use of such inspection vehicles may require designated inspection periods different from regular railway service schedules to run the inspection vehicles through rail tracks to be inspected.